Evaluating a new urbanist neighborhood (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
Highly vacant neighborhoods present challenges for balancing social, environmental, and economic considerations for land reuse. Since the 1960's, many post-Industrial cities such as Detroit have seen extreme population decline, creating severe economic loss and disinvestment in their communities. Strategies and opportunities CDAD Land Typology Current Condition Future Direction Traditional Residential Sectors Older, single-family homes and quiet, densely-populated streets. Mid to higher density single-family homes, along with some duplexes and quadplexes. Spacious Residential Transition Zones Mix of single family housing and vacant lots; Vacant lots become more noticeable; blight and fire damage is significant; obvious litter and dumping; some foreclosure and many vacant homes; mix of home owners and rentals; decreased values. Low density single family homes along with some duplexes and quadplexes. Yards can range from 30 ft lots to a quarter acre. Urban Homestead Sectors Vacant lots with some single family homes; structures on less than half of lots; limited educational attainment; bad infrastructure. Low and extremely low density; lots can be as large as an acre or more; low-impact agricultural activities permitted by zoning. Naturescapes Mostly vacant lots; illegal dumping obvious; mix of ownership; low housing values; low household income; bad infrastructure. Recreational uses and passive aesthetic uses; Naturescapes are focused in areas that have low density and are most ecologically important. Green Venture Zones Mostly vacant lots; illegal dumping obvious; mix of ownership; low values; low household income; bad infrastructure; delivery of city services and utilities is cost prohibitive. Manufacturing areas with minimal negative externalities (i.e. air, water, or noise pollution). Green Thoroughfares Commercial zoning on thoroughfare streets; residential zoning on wider residential streets; streets are predominantly vacant. Sections of former 5-10 lane commercial services have been reinvented as "green gateways" into the various other sectors of the city; where appropriate, marked paths allow for biking / walking as part of Detroit's Greenway / Bike Path system. Industry Zones Adjacent to shipping infrastructure such as freeways, major roads, and active rail; job center. Heavier industrial areas; buffered by Naturescapes and Green Venture Zones because of their disruptive environmental impacts, such as noise, heavy truck traffic, and various forms of pollution. Village Hubs Medium density mix of local and regional servicing businesses; non-residential land use where adjacent residential includes single family housing of traditional density. Medium to high density with mid and low-rise buildings connected to narrower, walkable "main street" commercial districts; occupied primarily by locally owned businesses providing retail and service amenities to surrounding residents. Shopping Hubs Located on a major thoroughfare; adjacent to freeway; predominately chain businesses; ample surface parking. Focused along existing major surface commercial corridors and interstate thruways; low commercial density, low-rise shopping sectors.
A typology of New Urbanism neighborhoods
This paper describes a framework for understanding the diversity of New Urbanism (NU) in practice in the United States. The framework is based on a nationally representative survey of NU developers that inventories characteristics of NU projects’ built environments across categories of urban design, land use, street configuration, and size. Using cluster analysis, the paper resolves the diversity of NU in practice into three types: Mainstream Urbanism, Dense Urbanism, and Hybrid Urbanism. The paper elaborates on each type, including geographic and temporal aspects of constituent projects. It also considers the ways in which the framework contributes to scholarly understanding of NU and advances the discussion of NU in practice.
Sustainability at the Neighborhood Level: Assessment Tools and the Pursuit of Sustainability
Neighborhoods play a major role in helping to achieve global sustainability. Within the past decade, numerous assessment tools worldwide have been developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the increasing number of neighborhood (re)development plans. This is an indication of the growing recognition among planners and decision-makers of the significant role that neighborhoods play in planning for sustainable development. Sustainability assessment of the built environment was initially focused on the building level. However, research and development of neighborhood sustainability assessment tools is nascent. Scaling up the sustainability assessment to the neighborhood level enables planners and decisionmakers to account for the impacts associated with the spaces between the single buildings and humans and other living organisms that use those spaces for living, working, and other purposes. It furthermore facilitates the consideration of synergies between the broad range of urban elements and activities. Neighborhood is a minimum scale at which social aspects and issues related to the economy of scale can be taken into account.
San Francisco's neighborhoods and auto dependency
Cities, 2019
Suburbanization and auto dependency have major problems. An alternative, the walkable neighborhood system, is one of a number of ideas designed to increase walking and other non-auto modes (NAM), sustainability, economic productivity, physical health, and livability. NAM includes walk, bicycle, public transit, and public cars (taxi, ehail ride, car share, car rental). A walkable neighborhood system has a high population density and complementary features that support local business and transit within an attractive walking distance. For a case study, we look at San Francisco, a world class city with high densities comparable to European cities. This article for the first time delineates neighborhoods in terms of walkable areas and correlations with four indicators of sustainability. We delineated 85 walking-area neighborhoods using ArcMAP and analyzed their correlations with NAM, vehicle miles traveled, walk score, and food sources. The hypothesis of a very high correlation of density and NAM is confirmed: densities over 50 persons per neighborhood acre support NAM above 60%. An exponential decrease in auto dependency with density is confirmed, but with a low correlation. The transition is gradual and uneven among neighborhoods. The large variation of performance among neighborhoods with very similar densities needs more research into complementary features. The correlation of density with vehicle miles traveled is very high, −0.807. The correlation of density with Walk Score is moderate, due to Walk Score being concerned with walkability and not with the underlying land uses supporting sustainability. The correlation of density with food sources is very high and the highest of the correlations we found.
Travel behavior in neo-traditional neighborhood developments: A case study in USA
Transportation Research Part A-policy and Practice, 2005
Although previous research has supported the view that neo-traditional or new urbanist designs result in more walking activity, several questions remain: Do residents of these neighborhoods substitute walking for driving trips, or do they make more trips overall? What is the role of self-selection of residents in these developments? This paper aims to address these questions by examining differences in travel behavior in a matched pair of neighborhoods (one conventional and one neo-traditional) in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina. A detailed behavioral survey of 453 households and two-stage regression models suggest that single-family households in the neo-traditional development make a similar number of total trips, but significantly fewer automobile trips and fewer external trips, and they travel fewer miles, than households in the conventional neighborhood, even after controlling for demographic characteristics of the households and for resident self-selection. The findings suggest that households in the neo-traditional development substitute driving trips with walking trips.
Drive or Walk?: Utilitarian Trips Within a Neotraditional Neighborhood
Transportation Research Record, 2006
An extensive literature has developed on the relationship between the physical environment and travel behavior. While many studies have found that neo-traditional neighborhood development supports non-auto travel by providing good street connectivity, pedestrian and cycling facilities, and internal destinations, questions remain about individual travel behavior within such neighborhoods. This study uses travel diaries to examine utilitarian trip-making behavior within a neo-traditional neighborhood, and compares total trips with mode-specific (i.e., walk and drive) trips. We use negative binomial regression to examine the effect of a set of independent variables including personal and household characteristics, select attitudinal factors, and distance from residences to the commercial center. We find that, within the neo-traditional neighborhood, walk trips drop off quickly with increasing distance to destinations, while drive trips increase. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of short distances for within-neighborhood travel, and the merit in considering trips separately for walk and drive modes to avoid obscuring important factors associated with trip-making.
The New Urbanism (NU) planning movement aspires to create socially diverse neighborhoods. It is unclear, however, whether this movement lives up to its aspirations in practice. In an effort to systematically examine this aspect of the movement, this paper analyzes age, family type, income, and race data of 70 NU neighborhoods in the United States. The paper uses a diversity index to compare the NU neighborhoods with control sites. Findings show that NU neighborhoods have lower racial diversity, but may have higher income diversity. Consideration of variations within the way NU is implemented reveals that the low racial diversity is associated with a single approach, but higher income diversity is associated with all variants. This paper argues that NU generates places that are more socially diverse than what is described in the literature and uses two case studies to explore the ways in which diversity is produced and its relation to gentrification.